Wood River times. [volume] (Hailey, Idaho) 1882-1915, 1887-05-03
WHAT THE SEASON BRINGS.
paople Who Live in the Bleak Lofts
paverty.

people Who Live in the Bleak Lofts OIL
Poverty.
Especial Correspondence
NEW YORK, April o.
Summer. with its discomforts, comes mucn
sooner to the dwellers in tenement houses
than to the residents of Fifth avenue:
Cooking, eating, sleeping and washing all
going on in turn within one or two small
rooms rather tend to increase the tempera-
ture As one glides past rows OF upper WIN
dows on the Sixth avenue elevated railroad
already the sights of midsummer begin 10
present themselves. Occasionally children
with no clothes on and bodies harmon1zlng
with the gutter are to be seen The winter
has been long enough to exhaust their STOCK
of clothing before the warm season for others
has arrived.
The laundress will already tell you how
fearfully hot the nights are. Her poor little
home reeks with steam and blazes with heat
all day, and so do the rooms of her neighbors
on the other side of the wall. They may
never be comfortably cool until next January
Very old heads are already hanging out OF
the windows in these dismal places. The
sweet spring air outside and the sunshine
lures them If the dimmed, unlovely eyes
it has been so long ago they cannot even re-
call the pleasure clearly. The lofts Of pow
erty in this city are fearful places in which
to meet old age and go with him into the
valley of death. Can even the poor Of quiet
villages, they who think themselves much
chastened by fortune-can they understand
the unsightly, hideous, unrelieved poverty of
the citys No; there is a depth of squalor
reached in cities which those who live away
from the great herd Of humanity never ap-
proximate.
Here and there as the train whzzes on you
will see an old porch, borne up by some creak-
ing brackets which are bound to break some
day and let ever so many people down into
their neighbors' back yards. The debris of
the winter is on these balconies. Old vines.
dead and crisp, are trailing over them
STILL Later, a few sickly plants will inger
out dreary existence there, and new vines
will do their best to thrive, but all growing
things will grow but feebly there. The in
cessant contact with human misery kills them
There are no spring clothes for the people
who dwell in these bleak lofts. The shop
windows have no joys for them. Rags and
cold are their portion in winter and rags
and heat in summer.
Down on the streets, under these high tene-
ment windows, children swarm. Dirty, oh,
dirtier than you could believe children could
get. So dirty are they that you dare not
breathe as you pass them. They under
stand that something pleasant has happened
meteorologically; but as for knowing the
name of the season or the nature of it that is
out of the question. Not one of crowd of
sixty of these greasy, black faced, ragged
mortals could tell what day the Fourth OF
July comes on, or why it comes at all They
know that they live i'll New York, and are
stingily fed and literally beaten, but the rest
of the world exists not to Them Probably
they could not tell what the word "worldn
meant if you asked them. They know that
nand organs are coming from their winter
quarters; that monkeys caps and jackets are
as brilliant as ever, and that after q while
they will want cool drinks and can't get them.
bese and other practical bits of knowledge
DO they know, but no "book larnin'"
GERTRUDE GARRISON